Cape Town Rock Climbing

Cape Town is the oldest and second largest city in South Africa.  Perched between the ocean and mountains, with a national park at its heart, it is truly a unique landscape.  

Everywhere you go in Cape Town you will see rock.  Most of the climbing here is traditional, although there are around 500 sport routes.  It is not recommended to climb any routes with expansion bolts.  There have been a number of bolts snap over the past few years and there is a team working hard to re-bolt all routes with glue-ins.

Most people think of Rocklands when they think of climbing in South Africa, but Cape Town has some amazing bouldering right here in the city.  At present (2025) there are almost 3,000 boulder problems in Cape Town.

The Cape Peninsula is blessed with a string of good quality sandstone and quartzite crags across a wide range of grades and offering different styles. These include; the bulging quartzite crags of Trappieskop and Peer’s Cave; the ever-popular faces of the Silvermine crags; to the very steep and mega-pumpy crags such the Hole and The Mine.

Paarl Rocks is probably the best and most prolific granite-climbing venue in South Africa. These beautiful granite domes provide both single and multi-pitch sport routes in a magnificent and tranquil setting. The style of the climbing is very different to the rest of the climbing around Cape Town and the routes tend to be more run out.

Hellfire is an awesome venue offering long single-pitch and two-pitch sport routes, in a wild mountain setting on hard red sandstone rock. Hellfire is a sport crag with a mountain attitude that is dwarfed by the huge Du Toit’s Peak.